Carol Carstensen’s Weekly Update

Parent Group Presidents:
BUDGET FACTOID:
The district’s contract settlement with MTI for this year and next are 3.98% and 3.97% package increases. This is below the state average (about 4.5%), below the average for large districts and below the average for Dane County districts.
Jan 23rd Meetings:
5 p.m. Special Board Meeting:
The Board discussed the status of contracts for administrators but took no action. The administration has already proposed reducing 4 administrative positions next year.
6 p.m. Long Range Planning Committee Meeting (Bill Keys, chair):
The Committee received the reports and final recommendations from the East Area and the Memorial/West Areas Task Forces. The recommendations are as follows: East Area recommendations:
Do not close schools
2. Move Affiliated Alternatives to Marquette/O’Keeffe
3. Move MSCR to Emerson
4. Change the middle school feeder pattern to move either Emerson or Hawthorne students to O’Keeffe.
5. Move the undeveloped land near the intersection of Milwaukee St. and Fair Oaks to the East Area.
6. Possible boundary changes affecting the 4 schools on the north side (Gompers, Lakeview, Lindbergh and Mendota).
Memorial/West recommendations:
1. Build an addition onto Leopold and build a new school on the far west side.

The Task Force also provided the Board with 2 “fall-back” plans if the Board did only one of the above (either the addition or the new school). If the Board chooses to do neither (or if a referendum for both fails), the Task Force could not put together an option that provided enough space for the 5 years it was charged to consider. It did give the Board a sample plan of the kind of boundary changes that would be necessary, as well as the information that there were at least 14 other plans they had considered but none were supported by a majority of the Task Force.
The Committee accepted the reports and recommendations and voted to pass them to the full Board for further discussion and decisions.
JANUARY 30th MEETINGS : (these will be in McDaniels auditorium and televised on Channel 10)
5 p.m. Performance & Achievement Committee (Shwaw Vang, chair)
Several presentations on heterogeneous grouping. (This is the first of several meetings on this topic.)
6 p.m Special Board Meeting:
The Board will discuss the recommendations from the Task Forces and begin to make decisions. If the Board is going to authorize a referendum in April it must make that decision within a few weeks.
FUTURE MEETINGS:
February 6 (televised)
5 p.m. Finance & Operations (Johnny Winston, Jr, chair) recycling report; shared savings; 5 year budget forecast
6 p.m. Performance & Achievement (Shwaw Vang, chair) – continued discussion of heterogeneous grouping;
7:15 p.m. Regular Board meeting
Last September, when the cost of natural gas skyrocketed I proposed that the Board pass a resolution to “cancel” winter this year. Do you suppose the recent unseasonably warm weather is a consequence of that?
Carol
Carol Carstensen, President
Madison School Board
“Until lions have their own historians, the hunters will always be glorified.” – African Proverb